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Olympian Cameron McEvoy: into physics and physical (video)
Swimmer and aspiring physicist Cameron McEvoy arrived at the 2016 Olympic Games with a lot of pressure on his shoulders, which are easily broad enough to take the load.
McEvoy has a philosophical approach that belies his 22 years. It’s no doubt underpinned by his scientific thinking: “Studying science and technology, and especially physics, you learn your place in the universe and it makes everything on one perspective of what you do on earth,” he told GE Reports after his Olympic Games competition was over. “Yes, I put a lot of time and effort into my swimming ... But regardless whether I swim well or don’t swim well, the sun is still going to rise in the morning, we’re still going to go around the sun.”
The applied maths and physics student (he’s completing his degree at Queensland’s Griffith University) had booked himself some brain games after the racing was over, with a visit to GE’s Global Research Centre (GRC) in Rio de Janeiro, one of the company’s eight such research-dedicated hubs around the world. In GE’s Rio GRC alone, 130 researchers and engineers are at work.
“GE were one of the first companies to establish purely research-based facilities around the world,” enthused McEvoy. “The main goal of that facility is just to conduct research. From a purely scientific point of view, I think that’s extremely important, and GE being one of the pioneers in that area of science and pushing innovative science along like that, I think that’s something really special.”
As the second week of the Olympic Games got underway, Geoff Culbert, chief executive and president of GE Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, met McEvoy at the Global Research Centre in Rio. Culbert showed the swimmer around, including a VR spin through the The Virtual GE Store, which showcases GE’s innovative cross-business technology and software solutions, then took the opportunity to talk about how McEvoy is helping to dispel the myth that science and sport are mutually exclusive.